Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality

Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality

Synopsis

This book aims to reinvigorate discussions of moral arguments for God's existence. To open this debate, Baggett and Walls argue that God's love and moral goodness are perfect, without defect, necessary, and recognizable. After integrating insights from the literature of both moral apologetics and theistic ethics, they defend theistic ethics against a variety of objections and, in so doing, bolster the case for the moral argument for God's existence. It is the intention of the authors to see this aspect of natural theology resume its rightful place of prominence, by showing how a worldview predicated on the God of both classical theism and historical Christian orthodoxy has more than adequate resources to answer the Euthyphro Dilemma, speak to the problem of evil, illumine natural law, and highlight the moral significance of the incarnation and resurrection of Christ. Ultimately, the authors argue, there is principled reason to believe that morality itself provides excellent reasons to look for a transcendent source of its authority and reality, and a source that is more than an abstract principle.

Excerpt

The topics of God and morality have been deeply connected throughout the history of philosophy, and the precise nature of this connection has been a source of lively debate for just as long. Both concepts raise issues of perennial importance for human life and our sense of our ultimate place in the world.

In recent years, questions about this connection have taken on additional weight. There’s been something ironically akin to an emotional camp-meeting style revival among contemporary intellectual critics of religion who, in a torrent of immensely popular books, have adopted the tone of an almost evangelical form of atheism, as odd as that might sound. They write with great panache and pointed argument against the truth and even basic reasonableness of religious belief, but the most salient feature of their recent work might be their high-pitched rhetoric of moral outrage.

These “new atheists” in all the major bookstore chains fervently urge their readers to adopt the view that any form of theism offering itself in the marketplace of actual religious ideas—whether in a temple, mosque, synagogue, or church—is false, irrational, and morally offensive. It’s especially this latter charge that seems to fuel the entire enterprise. in their appeal to readers, their rhetoric seems to rely on a fairly robust sense of moral good and evil, as well as right and wrong. in fact, their arguments appear to appeal both explicitly and implicitly to objective moral standards that, in their view, the . . .